I had hoped to call my blog "The Dog's Breakfast," but that name was long since taken. But in that spirit "The Breakfast" offers a little of this and a little of that, not all of it pretty, some of it poorly chewed. These are papers, posts, stories, correspondence, musings, and links to ideas that interest or amuse me.

Coincidentally, Mr. Southers is currently working for Johnathan Tal, of TAL Global, an associate of mine from the Silicon Valley days. Southers has a blog where he discussed his book in a recent post in which he reminds us:

Absent a set of specific criteria, we will continue to direct the
vast majority of our national security efforts against only one violent
ideology (i.e., Muslim extremism).

Title 22 of the U.S. Code, Section 2656f(d) defines terrorism as
“premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against
noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents,
usually intended to influence an audience.”

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) defines terrorism as
“the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to
intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any
segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.”

By that measure most (almost all) of the terrorism we have
experienced in the U.S. since 1865 has been the work of angry white men,
not transnational Islamist extremists. There was a time when the
federal government aggressively investigated the bombing of churches and
the assassination of civil rights workers without regard to the skin
color of the perpetrators or victims. Unfortunately, these days our
frightened neighbors and their political representatives are not much
interested in chasing anti-government extremists, white supremacists,
anti-semites, tax protesters, violent homophobes, or “right to life”
bombers and assassins, especially, it seems, if they happen to be white
and nominally Christian. There is some tolerance for tracking down the
tree-hugging arsonists, animal-loving vandals, balaclava-clad
anarchists, but they’re radical lefties and probably atheists after all.
I suppose it all depends on whose ox is gored, or what sort of news
coverage sells the most advertising.